November 05, 2020
Sigma Xi will present two exhibits from As Above As Below at the 2020 virtual STEM Art and Film Festival November 8, 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time as a part of a panel discussion. The festival is the final event of the Society's Virtual Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference.
As Above As Below is a collection of art curated and produced by Esther Mallouh. The collection is comprised of six multimedia and collaborative exhibits in San Francisco created by teams of artists, astrophysicists, and neuroscientists.
The accompanied panel discussion will be moderated by Mallouh and feature six panelists: Joel Primack, Olaf Sporns, Forest Stearns, Jeffrey Kruk, Tamira Elul, Yoon Chung Han. Each panelist contributed to the installations in the exhibit.
Panel Moderator: Esther Mallouh
Mallouh has over 20 years of international experience curating art collections for private and public entities. Her curatorial accomplishments extend to the creation of collaborative exhibitions at the intersection of art, science and technology.
Two of the original six exhibits will be highlighted at the Sigma Xi STEM Art and Film festival: I am a _____Neuron and The Undulating Architecture Illuminating the Individual Sciences.
I am a ______ Neuron is an interactive WebVR artwork of creative exploration within a virtual ecosystem where viewers can create their own personalized 3D artificial neurons, interact with them and observe their interactions in the virtual cosmic world.
The second exhibit, The Undulating Architecture Illuminating the Individual Sciences, is a video piece created from the artist' discovery that the differences between dark matter of the universe and the neural networks of our brains are far greater than the similarities. The creators use soap bubbles as the medium to creatively focus on the architectures of both sciences.
Participating Panelists:
Joel Primack
Astrophysicist on The Cosmic Web exhibit. Primack is a distinguished professor of physics emeritus at the University of California Santa Cruz. He initiated and helped develop cold dark matter, which has now become the standard theory of the origin and evolution of galaxies and large scale structure in the universe. He and his team use supercomputers to simulate the evolution of galaxies and the universe, and they compare the results with observational data using machine learning.
Olaf Sporns
Neuroscientist on The Brain Connectome exhibit. Sporns earned a PhD in neuroscience at Rockefeller University and then conducted postdoctoral work at The Neurosciences Institute in New York and San Diego. Currently he is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington. His main research area is theoretical and computational neuroscience, with a focus on complex brain networks.
Forest Stearns
Artist on The Undulating Architecture Illuminating the Individual Sciences exhibit. Stearns is the Principal Artist at DRAWEVERYWHERE where he produces unique artworks and leads collaborations connecting artists and institutions. He has a passion for founding Artist in Residence programs that connect art, science, and technology. Currently he is the Creative Innovation Consultant and Artist in Residence founder at Google AI Quantum in Santa Barbara Ca.
Jeffrey Kruk
Astrophysicist on the I am a ______ Neuron exhibit. Kruk is the Deputy Senior Project Scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He received his Bachelors degree in Physics from Princeton University, and a PhD in Physics from Yale University.
Tamira Elul
Neuroscientist on the I am a ______ Neuron exhibit. Elul received her PhD in Biophysics from UC Berkeley and did postdoctoral work at UCSF. Her laboratory research focuses on molecular and cellular mechanisms that establish neuronal connectivity during embryonic development, normally and in the context of prenatal drug exposure or neurodevelopmental disorders.
Yoon Chung Han
Artist for the I am a ______ Neuron exhibit. Han is an interactive media artist, award-winning interaction designer, and educator. Over the past ten years, she has created a wide range of interactive audiovisual art installations, data visualization, sonification, and musical interface design. She holds a PhD in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is currently an assistant professor in the department of design at San José State University.